ArticleNature human behaviour2024
Goal commitment is supported by vmPFC through selective attention.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cognitive, affective and behavioral functioning in patients with olfactory groove meningiomas: a systematic review.Neurosurgical review · 2025Pooled it
- Heterogeneous Medial Prefrontal Cortex Ensembles Exhibit Reproducible Internal Temporal Dynamics during Choice Behavior.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural and computational mechanisms of effort under the pressure of a deadline.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prefrontal modulation of striatal engagement: a hierarchical framework for goal-directed behavior.Communications biology · 2026Review
- When do we experience effort?Synthese · 2026Article
- On the Low Reliability of Sunk Cost Vignettes.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Change-of-mind neuroeconomic decision-making is modulated by LINC00473 in medial prefrontal cortex in a sex-dependent manner.Science advances · 2025Article
- Building momentum: A computational account of persistence toward long-term goals.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Disentangling the Component Processes in Complex Planning Impairments Following Ventromedial Prefrontal Lesions.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The human reward system encodes the subjective value of ideas during creative thinking.Communications biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
When striking a balance between commitment to a goal and flexibility in the face of better options, people often demonstrate strong goal perseveration. Here, using functional MRI (n = 30) and lesion patient (n = 26) studies, we argue that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) drives goal commitment linked to changes in goal-directed selective attention. Participants performed an incremental goal pursuit task involving sequential decisions between persisting with a goal versus abandoning progress for better alternative options. Individuals with stronger goal perseveration showed higher goal-directed attention in an interleaved attention task. Increasing goal-directed attention also affected abandonment decisions: while pursuing a goal, people lost their sensitivity to valuable alternative goals while remaining more sensitive to changes in the current goal. In a healthy population, individual differences in both commitment biases and goal-oriented attention were predicted by baseline goal-related activity in the vmPFC. Among lesion patients, vmPFC damage reduced goal commitment, leading to a performance benefit.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.